Eureka (12 page)

Garrett, a beefy cop who talked in a half-whisper, filled me in on the details. According to the neighbors, Loretta and Jimmy Clark, Verna Wilensky was their best friend. She had come home, as usual, at 5:30 p.m. the night before. They had chatted for a minute or two, then Wilensky had decided to mow the lawn. When darkness crept up on her, she went inside. The DeSoto was in the driveway when Clark and her husband left for work that morning, which was normal. When they got home and the car was still in the same place and the yard still half-mown, Mrs. Clark had gone over to check on her. The front door was unlocked, as were most front doors in the neighborhood, and her nose led her the rest of the way.

“Good enough,” I said. “I'll take it from here.”

Loretta Clark was a wisp of a woman, her hair cut in a bob. Her blue eyes were red from crying and she clutched a lace handkerchief in her hand like she was afraid it would fly away. Jimmy Clark was a slab of a man, with stooped shoulders, very little hair, a bulge for a stomach, and eyes fading with age. She did most of the talking.

“How long has Mrs. Wilensky lived here?” I asked, after expressing my condolences.

“We moved here in '27,” she said.

“It was the day Lindy flew the Atlantic,” Jimmy interrupted. “She invited us over to listen on her radio. That's how we met.”

“She had been here about three years at the time,” Loretta continued. “I guess 1924, maybe.”

“How about family? Kids, parents?”

She shook her head. “They were both only children, parents were dead. They never had kids.”

“They?”

“Verna and Frank, her husband. He was killed by a hit-and-run four years ago. A truck went through a red light and ran him over.”

“He was on his motorcycle,” Jimmy added.

“I don't know what we'll do without her. Losing Frank was bad enough but . . .”

She let the rest of the sentence dwindle out and started sobbing.

“Would you like a drink of water or something?” I asked.

She turned to Jimmy and said, “Get me a highball, would you, Jimmy?” And then turned quickly to me. “Will that be alright?” she asked, as if taking a drink of liquor violated some unwritten rule of the dead.

“I'm sure Verna won't be offended,” I answered, and Jimmy left on his chore.

“She was the most generous person I ever knew,” Loretta Clark went on. “We went to the movies once or twice a week and she always bought the tickets. And she had wonderful taste, nothing but the best for Verna. She called me ‘Sis,' that's how close we were.”

“Where was she before she moved here?”

“Texas. But she never talked about it. She was shy in so many ways. Hated to have her picture taken. It even embarrassed her for us to say thanks, that's just how she was.”

“How'd they meet?” I asked.

“He owned an auto repair shop. Something broke in her car and she took it there to get fixed. He brought her home on his motorcycle. We were astounded. She wasn't the adventurous type at all. After he left, she was absolutely giddy. They clicked right from the start. Six months later they were married and they were perfect together. She was gaga over him and he absolutely adored her. It took her three years to get over the accident.”

Jimmy returned with a highball the color of battery acid and she knocked down half of it without taking a breath.

“What was her maiden name?” I asked.

“Hicks,” Jimmy offered. “Verna Hicks.”

They talked a little longer but I learned nothing new, excused myself, and headed back to the Wilensky bathroom.

Bones had finished his work and he began a ritual I had watched dozens of times over the years. He lit a Lucky Strike and paced slowly back and forth in front of the tub while he verbalized his initial reaction:

“Last night the widow Wilensky starts to mow the lawn, runs out of light, decides to finish in the morning. Comes in, mixes herself a gin and tonic, fills the tub, lights a candle, turns on the radio, and settles in for a smoke and a drink with her favorite movie magazines. At this point, her life is suddenly being measured in seconds. When the water gets tepid, she starts out of the tub. Her foot slips. She reaches out to keep from falling, grabs the shelf with the radio on it. The shelf pulls loose, she falls back in the tub. The radio is right behind her. In an instant, it turns from an instrument of pleasure to a deadly weapon. It hits the side of her head and falls into the water. There's a loud pop, about as loud as a .22 going off, maybe a spark or two, but the widow Wilensky doesn't hear it. If she had put a toe in the tub, it would have given her a nasty shock, like sticking your finger in a lamp socket. If she'd put her foot in, it would have knocked her across the room, maybe killed her if she had a bad heart. But fully immersed? A hundred and twenty volts hits every pore in her body, every orifice. Everything stops at once—heart, lungs, liver, brain, the works. She's dead instantly.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that, she's the late widow Wilensky.”

“Very poetic,” I said with a smile.

Bones stopped pacing and took one last look at the cadaver. “Of course, that's off the cuff, but I think an autopsy and the pictures will bear me out.”

“Usually do,” I said.

“Thanks, m'boy,” the coroner said with a fleeting grin. “Okay, let's get the cleanup squad in here and take what's left of the lady downtown. I'm pretty backed up. Maybe day after tomorrow before I finish the post.”

“Fine. I'll sit on my report until then.” I shrugged. “What's the hurry, right?”

Bones nodded. “Wherever she was going,” he said, “she's there now.”

Bones left and the cleanup boys moved in. King and I walked out on the porch, and I rolled a cigarette and lit it with my Zippo.

“How about the dog?” King asked.

“Dog?” I said. “What dog?”

“There's a dog in the backyard. Should I call the pound?”

“The pound?”

“That's the routine when there's an animal involved and nobody to take care of it.”

“That's okay, I'll take a look. You and Garrett can go along, we'll finish up here.”

“It was a real honor working with you, Sergeant Bannon,” King said. “I read all about you dropping those four bozos on that western set over at Columbia last year.”

I smiled. “Don't believe everything you read in the papers,” I said.

“I read the reports.”

I laughed and said, “Don't you have anything better to do with your time?”

“I got two more years before I can take the exam for third-grade detective,” King said. “I'm studying.”

“Well, I got lucky that time,” I said. “Thanks, King. You did a nice job here.”

“Maybe I could put you down as a reference when I make the application?” He said it as a question, as if he were talking to someone else.

“Sure. Ward King. I can remember that,” I said.

“Thank you, sir,” the cop said, and flipped his forefinger off the bill of his cap. He had a ramrod kind of walk. A stiff ass, I thought, but he did good work.

Agassi was avidly reading through the papers from a hefty strongbox he had found in the large bottom drawer of the desk. There were stacks of bound checks and several papers lying on the desk. Ski Agassi loved research, loved going through papers and files and piecing together the everyday lives of victims. I loved visual details.

“Boy, this lady was really organized,” Agassi said. “Got bank records dating back to 1924. No will so far. No letters, nothing to connect her to anyone.”

“Keep digging,” I told him. I went into the kitchen and dropped the cigarette butt down the drain, then flipped the light switch by the door. The backyard lit up like Christmas.

I opened the door and stared down at a hulking mix of German shepherd, Irish setter, and God knew what else. Red with streaks of black in thick fur. Gold-flecked, inquisitive eyes. Paws the size of salad plates. His tail whisked the back porch.

Sitting down, he came up to my chest.

He growled at me, and I stared back at him but stood very still.

“It's alright, he's friendly,” Loretta's voice said from next door.

“He's growling at me.”

“He wants a bone,” she said. “When he wags his tail and growls that way, he wants a bone.”

I looked down at him, then cautiously reached out and scratched the top of the dog's head. “Sorry, pal,” I said, “I'm fresh out of bones.”

“Try the icebox. Verna gets them from the butcher. Dog food's in the pantry.”

I left the door open and checked the refrigerator, found three shank bones wrapped in red butcher paper, and took one back to the dog, who clamped teeth the size of railroad spikes on it, turned and started out to the yard, then stopped. He looked back over his shoulder at me, then he went down the steps, loped out into the yard, found a suitable dinner spot, circled it a couple of times, lay down, and chomped on his treasure.

“What's his name?” I asked.

“Rosebud.”

“Rosebud!”
I gasped
. “
He's a male, for God's sake! That's an awful name for a big mutt like that.”

“I know. She named him after a character in a movie she saw. She just loved the movies.”

“It wasn't a character, it was a sled.”

“You mean like a kid's snow sled?”

“Yeah, a snow sled.”

“She never told me that. Just like Verna. She had a screwy sense of humor.” She paused for a moment and said, “What's going to happen to him now?”

“Couldn't you take him?” I suggested.

“We have two cats. He hates them and they hate him.”

“Then I guess he'll go to the pound.”

“They'll put him to sleep!” she said with alarm.

“Maybe somebody will adopt him.”

“That's where she got him,” Mrs. Clark said. I could hear a new sob coming. “They were about to put him to sleep and she just couldn't bear the thought. Actually, she went to get a smaller dog.”

“He must weigh seventy, eighty pounds,” I said, watching the big dog tearing up the bone.

“He's such a sweetheart. She lets him in at night. He's trained.”

“Swell,” I said.

“How terribly sad,” she said. “First he loses Verna, now they're going to give him the gas. He deserves better.”

I closed the door and went back to the living room.

“I hate a day like this,” I said. “It's depressing. The great American love story.” I sat on the arm of one of the sofas and started rolling another cigarette. “Two lonely people meet, fall in love, work hard, weather the Depression, buy a little love nest in a nice neighborhood. What happens? He gets ironed out by a hit-and-run and she fries herself in the tub. Simple but sad.”

“Maybe not quite,” Ski said, still rifling through the papers in the strongbox.

“Maybe not quite what?” I asked.

“Maybe not quite so simple,” the big man answered.

CHAPTER 2

He had taken off his jacket, his tie was pulled down, and he had pulled his suspenders off his shoulders. He had been sweating and his handkerchief was stuffed in the back of his shirt collar. The lid of one of those large fireproof steel boxes was open, and there were stacks of documents, wrapped with rubber bands, spread out in piles on the desktop.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I thought I might find something to lead us back to where she came from,” he said without looking up. “Maybe find some relatives or something.”

“And?”

“This, which I think you'll find most interesting.”

He dropped a large bundle of what looked like letters in a separate pile. They were bankbooks. Lots of bankbooks.

“Check this out,” he said. He opened one of them and leafed through the pages, stopping now and then to make a comment.

“I figure her salary was forty bucks a week, that figure appears every Friday so I assume she got paid weekly. Nothing else stands out . . . except the papers on the house—paid in full at the time, in March of 1924, four thou. There are four car registrations, all paid in full at the time of purchase, the last was the DeSoto, bought in September 1939—looks like she got a new car every three years or so. Always cash. There are the usual bills for water, electricity, taxes. But lookee here. On the third of every month, like clockwork, five hundred smackers automatically go into her savings account. She paid the house loan, the cars, the furniture out of it, and very little else. Five C's a month, Zeke, the deposit slips are here but no mention of where the money came from. I went back ten years so far. Every month, like clockwork, on the third. And here's the kicker—her savings book.”

He laid it down in front of me. Verna Hicks had $98,400 in her savings account.

“Jesus,” I said.

“Yeah. All these financial records were in this box. It wasn't even locked. Her house and car papers, everything; even her husband's birth and death certificates and life insurance policy. Paid her five grand. And a bill of sale for Wilensky's business. She sold it two years ago. Seven thou and nickels. But not a mention of the five hundred. It isn't some kind of investment, the backup papers would be here. What do you think of that?”

“Maybe she had a married friend.”

He was digging through other bankbooks and flipping through them. He whistled through his teeth.

“These books go back, let's see, here's one from twenty-six, twenty-five . . . and that five hundred keeps popping up. Damn, Zee, her savings book shows she had these deposits going back to 1924. She opened it with four grand cash. She's been banking that five a month for, what, seventeen years! Right through the Depression and all.”

He took out the car papers and checked them out.

“She paid twelve hundred cash for the DeSoto.”

He looked at me. “Hell, she could've been living uptown with that kind of dough.”

“Well, she must've been saving it for something.”

Agassi shrugged. “What?” He dug around in the box and came up with a small green envelope and dumped a small key into his palm.

“Safe deposit key,” I said. “Maybe there's something there. What's the bank?”

“West Los Angeles National. There's two things missing,” he said.

“What?”

“No birth certificate. And no will.”

“Ninety-eight G's and no will?”

“Yeah, and she was totally organized. I mean, every scrap of paper she ever got's in here. But no will or B.C.”

“How about her purse?”

“I emptied it. The usual woman things, her wallet, and car keys. The wallet has eighteen bucks in it. According to her license, she was born April 14, 1894. She just turned forty-seven. That's it.”

I took out the makings, rolled one, fired it up, and took a long pull, then said, “You know who gets all this and the savings account if there's no beneficiary?”

“The state.”

“Yeah.”

“That don't seem right somehow.”

“Yeah, whoever said life's fair?”

He handed me a newspaper clipping from the
Times
. A two-column shot buried on the business page, it showed a group of women and one guy standing in a cluster around a small, plump brunette who was smiling sheepishly. The short story that accompanied it told us that Mrs. Verna Wilensky had celebrated her sixteenth anniversary with the Los Angeles tax assessor's office. It was dated seven weeks ago.

“This everything?”

Agassi nodded. “Not another personal thing in the whole damn house. I went through the closets and drawers while you were next door. Nada.”

“A paid-for house and car, ninety-plus grand in the bank, and no will.”

I smoked for a few moments in silence, leaning back and blowing the smoke toward the ceiling. I stared down at the collection of checks and deposit slips, picked up the clipping. Then it hit me. I walked into the bedroom and then back into the living room.

“Do you notice anything peculiar?” I asked Ski.

“Other than the small fortune in the bank?”

“Pictures,” I said. “There aren't any pictures of
any
body, except that clipping from the paper. No pictures of her, her husband, no family shots. Nothing.”

Ski stared at me blankly.

“Even the picture of her in the paper is kind of goofy. She isn't looking at the camera. She's staring down at the floor.”

I went back to the bathroom, stared at the broken shelf near the tub, pictured the corpse in my mind.

A very shy lady. A lady without a history for almost twenty years. No family pictures, not even a picture of her late husband. Not a wedding picture, or vacation shot with the Grand Canyon in the background.

So who was she saving the money for?

I got a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“How about the Clarks?” I said.

“The who?”

“People next door.”

“What about them?”

“You'd think if she didn't have any family she would've left something to her best friends.”

He thought about that for a minute and nodded.

“Or at least left it to her dog,” I said.

“There's a dog?”

“Out back, gnawing on a bone.”

“What happens to it?”

“The pound.”

“Well, that's pretty shitty.”

“Want a dog?”

“I got three kids, a goldfish, two canaries, and a dachshund who hates strangers. How about you?”

“I live alone, no pets allowed.”

“Too bad, so the dog goes to the pound. What do we do now?”

“Look, we don't know a damn thing about this woman before she moved here in 1924,” I said. “The Clarks say she came from Texas somewhere. Her license says she's forty-seven. She didn't just hatch seventeen years ago. Where the hell was she for the first thirty years of her life?”

“Well there ain't anything in this house that'll tell us the answer to that question.”

“I want the house sealed. Nobody else in or out.”

“Aw, c'mon, Zeke.”

“Tomorrow I take the bank, find out where the checks came from, and get into her safe deposit box; maybe there's a will in there. You take the job, see if somebody down there knows anything about her that might fill in her background. Maybe we can find a survivor. Then check Motor Vehicles, see if they have any further background on her.”

Ski shook his head and rolled his eyes.

“What're you building, Zee?”

“Precaution.”

“Precaution,” he said dejectedly. “Precaution of what?”

“Just precaution. That's our job, Ski. Got to be cautious.”

He growled under his breath and got up.

“I'll post a man at the door.”

“Until after the autopsy.”

“Right.”

“This lady didn't want anyone to know her before she was thirty—or apparently since. Let's find out why. I'll take everything we've got, go over the records when I get home, put together everything we know about her.”

“How about the people next door? Maybe we should take another crack at them.”

“They're not going anywhere. Let's see what we come up with. Maybe it'll jog their memories. I'll lock the place down. Take the box out to the car. I know how the smell gets to you.”

“You're a jewel, Zee.”

“Fourteen carat.”

“Then can we stop and get something to eat? I'm starving.”

“You're always starving, Ski.”

“I eat for three.”

I closed and locked the windows, then went to the back door and looked outside. When I opened it, Rosebud stared at me. A nub of the bone lay at his feet.

“He's probably hungry,” Mrs. Clark said. She was on her back porch with another drink. Jimmy sat beside her on the porch swing, sucking on a beer. “His bowl's under the stairs. She leaves it there during the day in case he wants a snack.”

“What are you, his guardian angel?”

“Somebody has to care.”

“You're doing more than your share,” I said. “This dog eats better than I do. By the way, do you have any photos of Verna?”

“She was funny about that. Hated to have her picture taken.”

I got the bowl, went into the kitchen, opened a can of Ken-L-Ration, and gave it to him. It vanished. He sat down and licked his chops. Then he looked over at the door. On a hook beside it was his leash.

“Ah hell.” I sighed.

I leashed him up, got the rest of the bones from the refrigerator, stuck a couple of cans of dog food in my pockets, got the front door key from under the mat, locked the front door, and we went out to the car. I opened the door and the dog jumped in the backseat without being invited.

I got behind the wheel and laid the bones on the seat beside me. Agassi didn't say anything until we were a block or two away.

“What's that?” he asked, nodding toward the butcher-paper bundle.

“Dog bones.”

“I'm not that hungry.”

“I thought you'd eat anything, Agassi.”

“ ‘I save the bones for Henry Jones 'cause Henry don't eat no meat,' ” he sang the line. It was an old blues song.

“I know, he's an egg man,” I said, finishing the line.

We drove another block. Agassi looked at the dog.

“I thought he was headed for the pound.”

“I'll take him tomorrow.”

“Uh-huh.”

Another block.

“What's the hound's name?”

“. . . Slugger,” I said.